


Not a Very Good Day

by semele



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-05-20 09:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19374352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: The world around Raven is bright and colorful, and organized so uniformly and neatly it almost makes her break into hives. Her job is to guide tours in the city where she lives, and she has dreams about going to college, and breaking out of this place one day, but for now, she takes care of groups of indifferent tourists, and flirts with a boy who works in one of the last independent coffee shops in the area. You see, he is really nice to her.A Bellamy/Raven Modern-Steampunk-ish AU.





	1. Espresso Boy

**Author's Note:**

> So. Funny story. This was supposed to be my novel.
> 
> I never really wrote much of it, and the last time I touched it before today was around 3 years ago. It's time to let go of it, and make space in my head for other things. I have two chapters written, and I'm posting the first one today -- the second one to follow soon. After that, no idea. Either I'll be able to pick it up and carry the story further, or I'll just be free of it.
> 
> This is a modern AU -- but not exactly. There are some slight tweaks to the world, so if you notice something not quite right, good. It's supposed to be there, and if I manage to carry this story further, I will definitely elaborate. 
> 
> I welcome any opportunity to brainstorm this fic. Clearly writing it in silence wasn't working out for me.

It's a Spanish tour a third day a row.

They pay better for Spanish, so Raven has no reason to complain as she dives into it. The people are her regular bunch, as obnoxious as they’re loaded; rich kids and richer pensioners off to see the world, thrilled to see that their tour guide is young, pretty and feisty. They aren't that bad, certainly better than some, and so it’s not that hard to smile at them and their round-the-mill tourist jokes. And so Raven smiles, smiles and points at the first terrible monument of many as she starts telling her story. James Bute was one of the city's founders, and as she scans the faces of her tourists for the day, she tries to decide whether they're the kind that can handle her going off-script to delve into the more interesting bits of Bute's biography. The middle schoolers look like they could do with some stories of booze and sex, even if in a slightly censored format, but judging by the two pompous old men in the front row, perhaps not. Not this time. Oh well. Their loss.

It's only Tuesday, so she isn't quite pissed off enough to tell them anyway.

As she moves through the city from the center out, pointing out to layers, medieval, industrial, then modern, her knee starts aching in a familiar way, fuck, not a good time for a bad day, but she grits her teeth like a champ, been there, done that. It's not like she can exactly stop, anyway.

The tour inevitably starts getting annoying somewhere around the art gallery, _yes, ma'am, this is really van Gogh_ , as if the lady can't see for herself; as if she isn't bored to death with all this sightseeing, and pathetically bad at hiding her disinterest. 

At least the money is good.

When Raven finally rolls into the coffee shop where she usually brings her tours for their lunch break, she falls into a chair with bare minimum of grace required; not quite unprofessional enough to openly grab her aching knee, but definitely getting there. Truth is, she needs a proper brace, and she knows very well that she does, but who the fuck has money for this kind of stuff? So far, she’s been managing with bandages and annoyance, and of course it’s not enough, but, well. It’s not like she can make one herself.

Meanwhile the shop is bustling around her, unaware of her distress. She vaguely knows the barista on shift today, and she knows he doesn't speak Spanish, but if she's being honest, he can go fuck himself for all she cares. 

When he brings her an espresso she hasn’t ordered and leaves it in front of her without a comment, she feels slightly guilty about her attitude. Slightly. Just a little…

No, she doesn’t, because whether she translates or not, those assholes she brings tip ridiculously well, and her coffee guy officially has nothing to complain about. But she still catches his gaze in the crowd and thanks him with a smile, like a person who has manners.

“I need to pay for that,” she says approaching the counter when her sandwich-sated group looks ready to leave.

The barista looks her straight in the eye before he shrugs ostensibly.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” he says with a blank face. And then, quietly: “Please, try not to kill any of them.”

By some miracle she manages to bite down on the bark of laughter this brings up, so none of her tourists notices as they gather up to leave, the barista suddenly as invisible to them as the machine he works. The money for her coffee, Raven sticks in the tip jar when she thinks no one at the bar is looking, because. Manners.

***

Just like every day, Raven promises herself that after dinner, she’ll finally look into that scholarship application, but her resolve starts weakening steadily as work hours tick by, and when she gets home, all she has the energy to do is flop on the couch, and stare at the ceiling for full fifteen minutes.

It’s the knee. Of course it is. And anyway, she has another two months before she has to submit the application, so what is she worried about?

Besides, she has shit to do. It’s her turn to clean the bathroom this week, and she doesn’t want to set a bad example. They have a new flatmate this month, and he looks like the decent kind, no dirty dishes in the sink for five days in a row, so Raven wants to be proper, too. Anyway, it’s not like she has much to do after Monty went ballistic on the detergent last week. Monty considers himself above all cleaning rosters on the planet, but when he gets to it once every three months, Raven feels like she’s shitting pine and breathing sea breeze for a week. 

So she dusts the bathroom more than actually cleans it, and since it makes her feel slightly guilty, she decides on doing a load of laundry as well, and throws in kitchen towels together with her clothes. Here. She is doing her part for the community, or something.

And then she can’t get to the scholarship essay anyway, because Echo comes home with a work rant ready right on the tip of her tongue, so Raven obviously has to listen. It’s something about an expired coupon and overtime, and a dickhead coworker who needs to start making his fucking coffee in his own fucking mug, because fuck him, and possibly also his family to the seventh or eleventh generation, Raven isn’t quite sure.

Say what you want about her work, at least no one steals her mugs.

“I got coffee for free,” she says when Echo is done spilling bile, and it earns her a grin.

“From some sleazy old tourist who thinks he has a shot?”

“From some hot young barista who saw my tour group and took pity.”

“Ah.” Echo considers her for a moment, then pushes her plate a bit towards Raven, inviting her to take a bite. “Anyway, free stuff. You say he’s hot?”

“Don’t get ideas.”

“Please, what else am I gonna think about at work? Let me live vicariously.”

It suddenly occurs to her that she could actually speak Spanish now, because it’s not like Echo can’t at least handle herself in it, but it feels weird somehow, like they were pretending to be someone else. Raven knows that she’s just being all awkward about it after those three days of Spanish at work, knows that Echo would probably be excited if she just switched out of the blue, but for some reason she doesn’t. Whatever. She’s just being stupid, and hey, she’s guiding in English tomorrow anyway.

***

It takes her all of two hours to start missing Spanish.

Her Wednesday group is some office trip from one district away, all sharp and ready to have the time of their life, and there is something about them that makes Raven step from one foot to the other, bite her lip as she fights for attention. There aren’t any questions from this lot as she hauls them from place to place, and she knows this shouldn’t matter. She gets paid whether they’re bored or thrilled, and anyway, what does she care? Even if they whisper among each other while she speaks, what does she care?

Truth is, those people aren’t worse than the average round of assholes she usually deals with. There always are whispers, and blank stares, and a polite disbelief at being told to care, but for some reason today it rattles Raven more than usual. Her tongue feels stiff in her mouth, slower than it rightfully should be even after the last three days of Spanish, and it doesn’t make any damn sense, not when she learned to switch languages so seamlessly no one is any wiser. Besides, she recited the script so many times so far that there is no way she is tripping up. It must be the weather, or something she ate, or whatever else it is that cool kids these days blame bad days on. She’s cranky. End of story.

It even annoys her that when they reach the art gallery, no one asks about van Gogh.

It’s three hours, two hours, one hour until lunch, and when she catches herself counting down to it, it leaves her even more annoyed than she was, ready to snap at the people she has to smile at whether she likes it or not. Likes them or not. Well, in this case, she does not.

She wants to sit down and take a breath, rest her knee even if it doesn’t hurt today, maybe order a coffee this time because she deserves a treat, it’s not so bad if she gets a treat once in a while. Even if the last one was yesterday. It doesn’t count, somehow. She didn’t ask for it, so it shouldn’t count, and if it doesn’t make any logical sense, then logic can go fuck itself. And anyway, she is an adult with a job, and she can spare three dollars for a coffee if she wants to. Why wouldn’t she?

The tourists, she concludes, leave her with way too much time to think as they walk towards her usual coffee shop, so when one woman notices a coffee chain and raises a rebellion that they want to go there, not anywhere else, Raven is startled out of thought, all arguments forgotten. _Just a few blocks further, the place I wanna show you is amazing. You can get Starbucks every day at home, why not try something new when you’re on vacation. It’s coffee. It’s one of the few fucking things you can still get independent, with no copyright dangling off its ass._

_Please, I wanna go see the espresso boy so he can be nice to me._

“Yeah, sure,” she says instead. “We can go here if you want.”

When they step in, she decides she’s not getting coffee after all.

***

So of course she lets Monty drag her out for beers after work, because apparently he’s having a good day for some reason, he isn’t telling why. It’s been fifteen minutes since Echo’s last tweet from her retail hell, so they don’t bother waiting for her to finish her shift. Clearly, she is working a late one. As for the new guy, he doesn’t really talk much, and they can’t even be sure if he’s home, what with how quiet he can be for hours at a time. His funeral. He’ll come around eventually if he wants to, or move out somewhere better after three months, hard to tell. It’s only been two weeks.

“You’re too fucking moody,” Monty tells her when they sit down with the first round, and Raven feels her hackles rise, fuck you, Monty, and everything you stand for, except she knows he’s saying it out of kindness. 

“Whatever. People were dicks today. I’ll let you know when it stops getting to me.”

“What do you care? You’ll never see them again.”

“Shouldn’t you work customer service if you love people so much?”

“Nice try.”

Because Monty is a well-intentioned office monkey who made not giving a shit into an art form. Apparently putting all his creativity into a tiny, windowless box is working really well for him, which is why he’s randomly having beers with Raven on a weekday. Right. Stay cool, Monty.

“So what did they do?” he asks, clearly judging that she must be ruffled still. “Mocked your favorite Bute statue? Do you even have a favorite Bute statue?”

“Yeah, I’ve got five,” she snaps, then takes a deep breath. This is Monty’s way of showing concerned. Don’t be a little shit, Raven. “I just don’t like talking to myself, okay? Whatever. I need to finish that scholarship application, get to a school, and be out of this job already. Swap it for retail like Echo. You think I’d be good at selling stuff? Part-time?”

“With your winning personality? Dream job.”

“I love you too.”

Which isn’t that far from the truth. Monty is hard not to love, despite his love for pine-smelling detergents and his tendency to complain about how he isn’t having nearly enough sex. Raven has been living with him for almost a year, and she has a hard time imagining how she ever did without him.

So she gives him a light punch on the shoulder, and settles for drinking more beer, lets herself relax in Monty’s company while he talks superhero movies, not that he isn’t completely wrong about them. Whatever. He got her out of the house when she was being broody, so he gets to be horrendously wrong for a night.

Well, half a night.

Alright, she’ll give him an hour.

And since Monty has no time for her two-beer superhero opinions, they decide to switch to some bigger bar with a dance floor, hoping the music will be too loud for them to talk. It doesn’t take them long to find one, and once they do, they dive straight into it, goofing around and strutting as music gets racier and racier. Or maybe it’s not the music. Maybe it’s the people moving, and laughing, and grinding, as if the fact that they can’t be heard was an excuse to do things they wouldn’t normally want seen. Well, it’s not like Raven can judge them. She used to adore this kind of dancing back when her knee allowed her to do whatever the hell she wanted, and now she’s too stubborn to give up even if she should, even if she knows it’ll hurt in the morning. She isn’t trying to be a hero, okay? She’s just really bad at giving up on things.

Monty knows she should be careful with her movements, but he sucks at restraining her, so she flows freely, if with a bit of hissing, lip bitten, I’m fine. I fucking told you I’m fine. She dances alone most of the time, free or as free as she can be, and then she steps on someone’s foot pretty hard, and turns around in horror.

She can’t place his face at first, because it doesn’t compute, wrong shirt and wrong hair, and completely wrong background, but then it clicks, and Raven grins like she just won the lottery. It’s the beers that make her say the first thing that comes to her mind, or maybe it’s the music, so loud it makes the whole world feel eerie and unreal.

“Espresso boy!” she exclaims gleefully, and throws her arms around his shoulders, hoping he’ll give her a spin. That’s how it works. He doesn’t know about the knee, and he’s supposed to give her a spin.

He doesn’t disappoint; almost picks her up, makes her feel even more like she’s floating, walking on two beers and club music, and on some deep, loud laughter she earned with her tactless nickname. Espresso boy? What was she even thinking.

“Sorry,” she yells when he sets her down. “That was rude. I don’t know your name!”

But his answer is drowned in bass, which he seems to be aware of, because he just shakes his head, puts his hand on the small of her back, and starts moving again, looks at her with a bit of a challenge hiding in his warm eyes. Or maybe that’s how she chooses to see it, because seeing him here makes her feel hilariously light, as if things were set back into place. Yes, come here, espresso boy. Be nice to me.

That’s why she kisses him by the end of the song. Because he’s so nice to her.

Because she thinks she can suddenly taste the tension between them right on the tip of her tongue, even if she never thought about it this way before. Because she keeps staring at his mouth, and she’s pretty sure he’s staring at hers as well. Because it’s Wednesday, they’re out dancing, and when you go out like this, obviously you want to get lucky. 

She has presence of mind enough to text Monty and tell him she’s heading home so he doesn’t worry, and then she’s pulling her espresso boy by the hand towards the nearest cab, screw the money at this point. Holy shit, she’s bringing him home, she’s bringing someone home, and he smells like coffee and kindness, and he’ll make this day so, so much better.

Well, okay. He smells like sweat and some horrible cigarettes, but it still feels good when he kisses her in her bedroom, and starts pulling her shirt up and over her head.

It’s been a while for Raven in general, and even longer since she last rolled into bed with a stranger, but it’s not like she doesn’t remember how. He’s nice and sweet, just tipsy enough to have a clumsy edge about his movements, and it’s more endearing than it technically should be, but Raven still takes it, oh how she takes it when he rubs slow circles into the small of her back, and takes the time to kiss her neck inch by inch, hide his face and take a few deep breaths as if bracing himself.

He never asks her what her problem is, so she figures she doesn’t have the right to ask him about his, either.

***

She wakes up early and she wakes up warm, espresso boy’s bare chest still pressed against her back, and it feels better than it legally should. She officially doesn’t have the cheap excuse of two beers anymore, not that it really worked even last night, after an hour of dancing and a ride home. So much for a drunk hook-up. Lonely hook-up, more like it.

Espresso boy probably had a bit more booze than she did, but he’s tall like hell, so even if he’d had twice as much, he probably won’t have a hint of a hangover. Raven knows how this goes. Who the hell can afford to get really hammered while being out in a club?

Unless he had some at home before he went out. That gives Raven a stop, makes her squirm uncomfortably against him. Did she just screw someone who was too out of it to tell her yes or no? No, no she didn’t, she remembers. He flirted with her in the cab, made those clever, gentle jokes that had her in giggles, had her leaning against his shoulder and poking his side. He even pulled out his phone in the midst of that conversation, and set an alarm, said he has a shift starting at noon. 

And she has one starting at nine. Shit.

He stirs when she tries getting out of his arms, and in some dumb reflex he pulls her closer, lets out a hot breath against the nape of her neck. _Yeah, I know, pretty boy. I don’t wanna get out of bed either, but life sucks._

It’s not like she’s late, and she definitely has time for breakfast, but only if she stops stalling, and gets her ass in a gear now. He can stay for all she cares. Echo probably starts late, and she can let him out when he wakes.

Which is why she covers the hand he has on her stomach with hers, and rubs lightly.

“Come on. Rise and shine.”

She hears him groan quietly, and then he comes to, rolls to his back and rubs his face awake. She doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t miss the warmth of him. Get it together, Raven. He’s a one-night stand.

“Shit, I fell asleep,” he mutters, and just like that, there is distance between them, just how it should be, because this isn’t some fake-deep movie about the meaning of life.

“It’s fine. You set an alarm, remember? You aren’t late for work.”

She feels more than sees him nod behind her, and then, to her great surprise, he kisses her bare shoulder before crawling out of bed in search of his clothes.

“Will you be at the shop today?” he asks as he pulls his briefs on. “We missed you yesterday.”

_Yeah. I missed you too._

“Not sure. Depends on the group. Some insist on chains.”

“Barbarians.”

“Hey, that’s what I tell them.”

She’s still in bed, covering herself with a sheet, and maybe that’s what makes him hesitate, freeze mid-motion when he was about to come back for a second, steal a touch or a kiss goodbye. He wasn’t so shy last night, but maybe that’s what the morning after will do to a guy. She sure was more forward when she could claim those proud two beers.

“Yeah, well, anyway. I'll see you later.”

And since she doesn’t stop him, of course he leaves.


	2. Tour Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he comes home, the apartment is still a fucking mess, and Monroe is seething in the kitchen, but not enough to not grin at what’s obviously his walk of shame. Clumsy walk. Because he almost steps into a bucket of glossy “Soft Peach” or however that color is called, then narrowly avoids tripping over a big brush drying at the door to Monroe’s room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here it is! Chapter 2 -- aka as much as I had written in my draft from 3 years ago. I have next week off, so let's see if Chapter 3 happens. Either way, thank you so much for your support so far! I'm really glad I decided to finally release this from my clutches.

When he comes home, the apartment is still a fucking mess, and Monroe is seething in the kitchen, but not enough to not grin at what’s obviously his walk of shame. Clumsy walk. Because he almost steps into a bucket of glossy “Soft Peach” or however that color is called, then narrowly avoids tripping over a big brush drying at the door to Monroe’s room.

“I didn’t hear you come back last night,” she teases, and Bellamy grumbles a bit at her cheeky grin, but still hands her a fresh roll he grabbed from the bakery on his way home. She might be a little shit, but she’s a friend.

“So. The landlord is still randomly painting Miller’s room?” he asks as he reaches for jam. “And the brushes are just gonna hang out in the hallway?”

“Yup. He hopes that if he paints, the next person who moves in will agree to a higher rent. That’s my theory.” 

“He’ll end up raising ours, you’ll see,” says Bellamy gloomily, the delivery somewhat disrupted by the fact that he focuses on the coffee maker on the counter. Does he want coffee now? Or should he wait until he’s at work?

“Don’t be dramatic. So, last night. What’s she like? Or he?”

“Aren’t you curious.”

“You’re my favorite gossip column, hon.”

Well, that much is true. Monroe tends to watch Bellamy’s life with an interest worthy of something much better-written, and he suspects it’s because she genuinely likes him as a person, or something of the sort. To be fair, most days he fails to entertain her, stuck somewhere between work and school, except the latter isn’t in the picture anymore, is it? It’s been a few months since he dropped out, but the thought still surprises him sometimes. No more classes. No more projects. Funny how those things go.

Maybe it’s not going to school anymore that leaves him bored enough to feed his dumb ideas. See: last night. Came home from work, saw the mess their landlord had made with the surprise painting of a former flatmate’s room, turned around, had a few beers, smoked five cigarettes he’s still regretting, and dived from the dance floor straight to a stranger’s bed. At least that last part didn’t end badly, even if it rightfully should have.

“Don’t you have, like, homework?” he asks in a pathetic effort to distract Monroe from how how messy he is, all unshaven cheeks and fucked up hair, not to mention he probably smells like sex. Is it actually possible to tell that someone else smells like sex? He isn’t sure of this one.

“Nice try. Oh come on, tell me! A guy or a girl?”

“A girl,” he says with a heavy sigh, then plops on his favorite stool, a mug in hand. He needs to cut down on coffee, but maybe not today. “Just… Someone I know. I ran into her in the club. She was nice. Let me stay over.”

“Probably hoping for round two in the morning.”

“She had work in the morning. I got out of her hair. Don’t you have work?”

“Classes.” Monroe waves a notebook proudly, then finishes her roll, sets dishes in the sink. Later. They can clean up later.

“Good luck then. You’re on your own for dinner. I’ll be late.”

Because he’s closing shop today, a shift from noon to who the fuck knows when, and so he possibly shouldn’t have gone out last night. Shouldn’t have drank, or slept in a strange bed, or gotten up way too early. Even now, he might not exactly feel the dried sweat on his skin, but he knows it’s there, and that’s enough for him to want to scratch himself all over.

It’s nothing a shower won’t fix, but even a shower feels like a chore just now. What a great way to start a day.

***

What’s weird is, being at work actually makes him feel better, as if there was something therapeutic in the repetitive motions he falls into. Funny how this is the most creative thing he gets to do these days, routine and measured as it is. He is with one of the last independent shops in town, and they still do things by hand, allowing for variety, for a spark of thought or error. Eventually, he knows, coffee will get licensed, the way most things are now, but for now, he has this. One thing in his life that’s not ruled by merciless procedures, but by simple recipes that bend to his will if he wants them to.

So here it goes: put coffee into the portafilter on the count of one, two, three, four, five, shake it up, even out, swipe the tamper over the inside of your wrist. Rinse, repeat, grab one cup, two cups, a shot glass, a washcloth. The first two weeks, he remembers were pure hell of clumsy hands and burned fingers, hot milk all over his clothes and his shoes, sometimes even in his hair. But it’s been ages, and now he can do it almost without thinking, pour and measure and clean like it’s no effort at all. 

On good days, he even remembers to flirt with the customers.

Of course today isn’t a very good day, but he manages to maneuver himself so that he’s a little bit away from the counter, pushes someone else to take orders while he actually prepares them, because it’s faster if they divide work this way. He’s all about efficiency, and his boss can’t complain, not even if it’s obvious that Bellamy likes the coffee machine better than he likes people. 

When his tour girl walks in, Bellamy knows even before he sees her. Her tourists always have a specific vibe to them, something loud and vaguely obnoxious even when he can tell they’re trying to be really nice. There is just something about people who pay money to spend the whole day gawking without ever thinking that they could question anything they see.

As for the girl, she comes up last, and Bellamy gently nudges away his coworker who was about to take her order. Only now does he realize that he never caught her name; not in the months she’s been coming here, and certainly not last night, too busy touching her warm skin, and kissing her everywhere he could reach. It felt important, somehow, to do that right away, and not waste time asking stupid questions.

“Hi,” she tells him now, surprisingly shy, and seeing her like this actually helps his awkwardness a little bit.

“What, no ‘espresso boy’?” he teases softly, and when she looks up, he manages a small smile. He wasn’t sure how to talk to her once he sees her again, but while he might be bad at flirting, he isn’t too shabby at putting people at ease. “I’m glad you showed up today. What’s your poison, tour girl?”

And just like that, she lights up, finally meets his gaze instead of ostensibly browsing the coffee menu behind him.

“You didn’t catch my name either, huh?”

“Nope,” he admits shamelessly, and flings his washcloth over his forearm. “It’s fine. How do you take your coffee?”

“Surprise me.”

Well. It’s the first time he’s heard that in a long while.

***

It becomes a game of sorts in the following week, and Bellamy becomes so absorbed with it that his cigarettes don’t tempt him once since that night he went out drinking. The tour girl shows up three more times with her tourists, and she makes a point to always order with him, but neither attempts to learn the other’s name, even though Bellamy’s is written on the name tag he has pinned to his chest. Somehow he knows that the tour girl never looks there, just like he tries not to listen when her tourists call for her, and he can’t fully explain why doing things this way is fun, but he can tell that she feels it, too.

She’s decent enough to insist to pay for the coffee he makes for her, and so he keeps the beverages simple even when she asks him to surprise her, as if it was unfair of him to try impressing her with something that would cost her an extra buck. Besides, any moron can pour in half a cup of vanilla syrup and call it fancy coffee. What Bellamy tries to do instead is read her face, hand her a big cup of smooth cappuccino when Monday turns out to be rainy, and put one extra gingerbread cookie on her saucer when the Wednesday group seems particularly obnoxious. It’s really hard to tell why he tries to flirt with her by selling her coffee; it’s not like they really talk about the night they shared, or make any attempts to repeat the experience. And anyway, who the hell flirts with customers like this? He should get his shit together and ask her out if he really likes her so much.

Does he like her, really? Or is it just that she was nice? That she grinned when she saw him on that dance floor, that she kept teasing him gently even after she saw him naked? For now, he can’t exactly tell one way or the other, but he knows that when she doesn’t show up in the shop for lunch, he’s in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

Even his little sister notices something when she calls him on that double cookie Wednesday. It’s not like he tells her much, because holy shit, O is eighteen and she does not need to know how much of a bad example he is, but she still comments on his voice when he picks up the phone. _You sound chipper, big brother. Tell me all._

Since tour girl is officially none of her business, he talks about his landlord instead, makes a funny story out of three days of impromptu painting. He almost stepped right into a drying brush, and there was glitter in that paint, so that would not be pretty. After the landlord made a valiant attempt at cleaning after himself, they’re still washing glitter off the bathroom tiles, and Monroe swears there is even some in Bellamy’s hair, calls him Edward the Vampire and dodges all too well when he decides to gain some peace and quiet by throwing a banana at her. Does O know how hard it is to wash a ripe banana off the fridge door?

“You need a better place,” says O with a low chuckle, as if she had any idea what it was like to not live with Mom anymore. Not that Bellamy begrudges her. “And a better job.”

Well, in many ways, she’s not wrong about that one.

***

He has a morning shift on Thursday, and so after work he sits down with Monroe, and gets to reworking his resume. It’s a responsible thing to do, and the only way to start. How is he supposed to start looking for a better job if he doesn’t have his resume in order?

“You can mention that you have two years of college,” she says as she reads through the page. “I mean, that’s a thing one mentions, right?”

“Yeah, when you’re still in college. I don’t know, it doesn’t look too good. Dropped out before declaring a major, how stellar.”

“But you managed to work and study, so hey, hardworking!”

Bellamy rolls his eyes.

“Yes, I’m a coffee master. A degree in caramel syrup. I can make a skinny vanilla asshole latte in my sleep.”

“You’re such a coffee snob.”

“Can’t afford to be a cigarette snob. Alright, so you think I should try putting college there?”

Worst case scenario, he can tell some old sob story in the interview, little sister in high school and a difficult family situation, he’s sure he can come up with something to explain his dropping out. And he plans to return, of course he does. He’ll put himself through college, pull himself up by his bootstraps, all that jazz. How very responsible of him.

“I should’ve gone to police academy,” he mutters when they get to his work history. “At least you don’t need any qualifications for that.”

“You should’ve, but you chose not to hate yourself instead, so stop whining. Hey, didn’t you volunteer to tutor those kids in English your first year? Put that here. It shows dedication to community, or something.”

“Right. And we value that. We and our corporate overlords.”

It takes them way into the night, but at least the resume is all done, set and ready for Bellamy to start his job hunt in earnest. As soon as he finds time. This weekend, maybe. Definitely not today. It’s already Friday, a busy day, and he’s closing shop today. He’ll come home exhausted, inhale dinner, lie to himself about going out to do something interesting, then fall asleep halfway through reading an article someone linked to on Facebook. 

Or maybe not. Maybe today of all days will be quite different.

On the other hand, maybe it won’t.

The day is painfully slow, with few orders and even fewer tips, screw his Friday expectations, and Bellamy feels his mouth stretch as he smiles to person after person, smiles piling up on his head until it feels like a trap, too much, too long, fuck, he needs a new job as soon as possible, portafilter, coffee, one, two, three, four, five, shake, tamper…

When it’s finally time for a break, he gives up on food. Instead, he shoots outside like the devil’s chasing him, and lights a cigarette as soon as he’s out the door.

At least a slow day means there probably won’t be any overtime, but Bellamy still tries to not count down hours, three, two, one, because given his luck, a rowdy group of teenagers will storm in fifteen minutes before closing, and stay for an hour. When the clock shows twenty to eight, he’s so sure it’ll happen he almost texts Monroe to ask her to save him something from dinner, because he’ll be late due to imaginary teenagers.

But what happens instead is this: tour girl steps in quietly, comes up to the counter, and sets her bag next to the tip jar.

“I was passing by, and I thought…” And then she hesitates, twists her body slightly like she was poised for flight, turns her head to look behind her. “Shit, you’re about to close. Sorry, I didn’t think… I’ll come some other time, don’t wanna keep you overtime.”

“It’s fine.” He almost catches her hand, but stops himself at the last moment, smiles at her instead. He missed her today. For some bizarre reason, he missed her. “Come on, take a seat. I’m closing in fifteen. You can keep me company.”

It’s like she still isn’t quite sure what to do, but in the end she smiles, and sits on a tall stool by the counter, as if they are in some very bad movie and he’s a bartender about to hear all her darkest secrets. Except instead of pouring her a shot of whisky, then standing there and wiping a glass for half an hour, he takes a quick look at the fridge, spies a slice of cake that won’t make it until tomorrow, and puts it in front of her.

“Here. You look like you like chocolate.”

She looks at the cake, then slowly back up at him, and suddenly she cracks a big, radiant smile.

“For real? ‘You look like you like chocolate?’ Does this line ever work, espresso boy?”

“Yeah, well. I had a crap day.”

She still digs into the cake, and he ends up grabbing a clean fork from the drawer, then stealing a bite himself, laughing together with her. Holy shit, this is good cake. He doesn’t eat cake nearly often enough.

“It’s Bellamy.” He extends a hand to her, and she takes it with a mock-serious expression, but her grip is solid and warm, and eerily assuring. Watch him start crushing on a girl hopelessly because of how she shakes his hand.

“Raven,” she says, then bites her lip on another smile. “Is this awkward? It is kinda awkward, right? I mean…”

“Eh. I’ve seen worse. Is it your day off today?”

“Mm. I accidentally on purpose had some errand in the neighborhood.”

He should go home and send out some of those freshly edited resumes of his, since by some miracle he’s finishing on time today. Should go, and pick up something for dinner, and possibly do some cleaning before Monroe yells at him for being a parasite. Yes. Yes he should.

“Well then. If you can wait for me to mop the floor and clean the coffee machine, I can walk you home. It’s totally on my way.”


End file.
